PLANE FORCED TO TURN AROUND, Police Remove NAACP President From Flight Over Argument With Passenger

North Carolina NAACP President William Barber was removed from a flight in Washington, D.C., Friday night after he was deemed a “disruptive passenger” by an American Airlines pilot.

Barber wrote in a statement that he had boarded the plane and was sitting in the two seats he had purchased when he overheard a man sitting behind him talking loudly. Barber says after he asked a flight attended to ask the man to lower his voice, that’s when the altercation started.

“But as she left, I heard him saying distasteful and disparaging things about me,” Barber said in the statement. “He had problems with ‘those people’ and he spoke harshly about my need for ‘two seats,’ among other subjects.”

Barber says he purchased two seat because of a physical disability, the same ailment that caused him to stand up instead of simply turning his head to confront the passenger behind him.

“I asked him why he was saying such things, and I said he did not know me, my condition, and I added I would pray for him,” Barber said.